I say ‘forerunner’ but reading Manuel Morais‘s Colecção de Peças para Machete, the rajão seems like the much more likely candidate. The soprano uke is more like a machete in size and number of strings, but not at all like it in terms of tuning. And I’d say the uke’s re-entrant tuning was its defining characteristic. In that, it’s much more like the 5-string, tenor-ukulele sized rajão which is tuned dgCEA (with re-entrant d- and g-strings).

The difference in tuning between the machete and the uke does cause a few problems. Unlike yesterday’s tunes, today’s don’t transfer directly to a re-entrant uke as pleasingly. They would, however, work well on a low-G uke (with the A-string tuned down to G) or on a baritone (with the E-string tuned down to D). I might well re-arrange them for standard uke sometime.

Again these tabs (worked out from the original manuscript which is public domain) and MP3s are released under a Creative Commons license meaning you can freely play them, record them, adapt them, pass them round or even sell them. I had assumed everyone was familiar with Creative Commons but a comment from plink freud set me straight. I’m more than happy to write a post about my take on Creative Commons – and I might well do that – but you can read the official version here and watch this video.

Masaniello

There’s a bit of an anomaly in the original score for this one. Bar 15 is clearly only has enough notes in it for a bar of 3/4. But there’s no indication of a time signature change and you’d expect it to be (indeed it’s very similar to) a repeat of bar 3. I’ve retained it as written in the tab above but here’s a tab with bar 15 repeating bar 3.

Al, these are all fantastic – you’ve inspired me. I’ve quit my job and bought a small fishing boat. I’ll eat nothing but salted cod washed down with Vinho Verde. People have been looking at me funny here on the shores of Lake Erie, but they’ll come around.